A Microsoft-Red Hat warming trend?

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That will never happen

Not with Red Hat at least. Contrary to what people think, all Red Hat's code base is GPL'ed, there is NOT a single package that has a doubtious stand against the GPL, BSD or any other valid FLOSS license. Take Java for example, they do not distribute ANY JRE with RHEL nor Fedora, but are working on making gcj a valid Free and libre* JRE for Linux, though its problem may be that code needs to be recompiled to use it... In any case, not even with their aliance with Oracle, do they package Oracle DBs to the public, they only make sure the DB works with their software, and the customers are the ones responsible to reach out to Oracle to get their DB packages, if they so CHOOSE to.

There is no way in hell Red Hat will ever touch any code coming from Microsoft if it doesn't bear the GPL disclaimer on it before hand. Sure, Red Hat could, in the other hand, give Microsoft code to ensure Windows can PROPERLY interoperate with RHEL, for server administration, VNC, remote desktop and whatnot; not the other way around. The legal dept at Red Hat is one of the most strict ones I've seen, they won't even consider any good deal if there's even the slightest chance for it to be phony.

What I would like to know, though, is who ACTUALLY called this meeting up. I'm pretty use it wasn't Red Hat's Szullik who started this, but Stevie boy instead.

As many of you have already pointed out, it wont make the slightest difference whether or not Microsoft kills Red Hat (if it can), since it will only strengthen FLOSS against them. Plus Red Hat has key aliances already made (as already pointed out) with HP, SUN, IBM and other BIG players in town that most surely will see that Microsoft won't do anything stupid... Hell, even Microsoft's biggest partner in the US in the computer making business (Dell) has already started to explore and invest in Linux technologies... If they really want to reach interoperability at the highest degree, whether it be at the server level or desktop level, they would have to make a series of technologies available under one or other OSS license, quite unlikely, though... I can think of a few things M$ could Open up/Free up to ensure their supremacy (their Office formats, for starters, they're the defacto standtards already).

Still M$ has the biggest wallet, and as such they're the ones who are risking much, much more than RH in these bets (if there are any).

Microsoft would have been better off persuading other (though "minor") Linux distributors that actually have 'gotten their hands dirty' by providing closed source or doubtious packages (like Java or mp3 decoders and the like), they would be much easier to persuade to comply with their 'wishes' (= dirty tactics) and through them (with the promise of a much better revenue) start infecting the FLOSS community. Going with the biggest player, in this case, to me at least, doesn't make any bit of sense (but that's just me).

*I find it funny how the English language has to use another's language word to describe the actual situation, since the word for giving someting away (free) and the word to imply that something or someone is not bound to anything (is free), is the same... '?Viva la libertad! y ?Gracias por ser Gratis!'

Posted by: thetargos   Posted on: 05/12/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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